Thursday, October 25, 2012

Lingering Items--Press Conference Edition

If there was a telling moment in the
strange, if only because of timing, press conference that Mike
Holmgren conducted earlier this week it was this. The outgoing
president said he was hired to essentially be former owner Randy
Lerner’s surrogate. Sure enough, that’s what he became, a
reclusive, indecisive, hem-hawing mess of an executive in a job that
seemed perfect in theory and a disaster in practice. You know,
pretty much the working definition of Lerner’s tenure as the
reluctant owner he was.

Ok, so there was another telling moment
in the press conference as well and it was that the aging has-been
still desires to coach. What’s so telling about that statement is
that he had every opportunity to jump into that fray in Cleveland and
perhaps actually start righting the ship but declined in favor of
doing Pat Shurmur a solid by giving him his first head coaching job.

Nothing about Holmgren’s tenure as
the president of the Browns makes much sense in retrospect. Holmgren
was asked again about why he wasted a year by keeping Mangini in
place and gave the same stock answer—he wanted to be fair to
Mangini. That sounds fine except for the fact that his charge was
broader than protecting a member of the coaching fraternity.
Holmgren was charged with putting the pieces together of a franchise
that’s been in shambles since that day it was established in its
reconstituted from. It was supposed to be at times a difficult job
that would probably result in some blood being spilled.

It was from that moment on where
Holmgren essentially did a disservice to fans of the Cleveland
Browns. Unfortunately it didn't get much better from there.

That the Browns have a new owner is
meaningful only because until last Tuesday that Browns effectively
functioned without an owner. Lerner wasn’t the worst owner in the
history of professional sports. Once Ted Stepien thrust himself on
the world the award for worst owner was permanently retired. But
Lerner was a bad owner because he was so indifferent about his stake.

No one would have much cared if Lerner
played the rich, indifferent bounder if he had been doing so AFTER
hiring people who ran counter to his type. But Lerner’s
dispassionate attitude permeated a culture in Berea that was quickly
adopted by all who orbited around him. Ultimately the same reasons
that Lerner was a lousy owner are the same reasons that Holmgren was
a lousy president of the Browns.

I’m not sure if the role of president
just didn’t fit Holmgren or that Holmgren worked to hard to fit
into the role of Lerner surrogate, right down to the almost
non-sensical rantings of alleged passion that were completely
untethered to the reality of his conduct.

What Lerner never understood about his
role is exactly the same thing Holmgren never stood about his role
and what ultimately doomed them both. No one ever saw Lerner put in
a lick of work toward improving this team and its prospects. Ditto
for Holmgren. Both told us how hard they were working behind the
scenes and asked the fans to essentially take the truth of those
assertions on a leap of faith.

It’s a strange dynamic, certainly,
but in the kind of high profile roles both Lerner and Holmgren
occupied, it was incumbent upon them to actually show the fans that
they were working hard, even if it was exactly that, a show.

Fans may not like the jobs that Tom
Heckert and Shurmur are doing, but at least they can see them both
working. Players come and go, sometimes on a daily basis, as the
Browns fiddle with their roster. That’s the work of Heckert.
Practices are conducted daily and the Browns play weekly. That’s
the work of Shurmur. Irrespective of the results, there’s not
question that each is putting in the time.

Holmgren and Lerner on the other hand
had an aversion to working in public. Lerner gave a handful of
interviews in the 10 years or so of his ownership but these were
always after the season. Once in awhile he was forced to do
something publicly, as when he had to chastise Phil Savage for, well,
being an idiot by f-bombing a fan. The theory, and it was really
only just that, a theory, about Lerner was that he was publicity shy.
But a competing theory, equally valid as invalid, was that Lerner
simply didn’t want to be discovered as a phony. There’s
something about the camera that both reveals and defines character
and from all outward appearances, the privately nice guy was nothing
more than an empty sport coat.

That’s where Holmgren and Lerner
departed. Holmgren wasn’t a phony, certainly. He was just an old
football coach kicked upstairs as the pressures and anxieties of
coaching grew beyond his ability to manage them. Sure he missed the
limelight as he occasionally flirted with the idea of returning to
the sidelines, including right before Shurmur was hired. And you get
the sense, don’t you, that while Holmgren liked the idea of giving
the job to Shurmur, he really couldn’t see anyone else occupying
the only real job he ever wanted—head coach in the NFL.

I wrack my brain trying to find one
accomplishment of note of the Holmgren era and can find none. Indeed
it’s far easier to find the flaws of his approach, from the wasted
year of Mangini to the testy, ill-conceived press conferences, to
the decision to not go all in on Robert Griffin III. Argue all you
want that the franchise is in better shape now then it was when
Holmgren came in but you’ll have trouble finding objective proof to
back it up.

I had high hopes for Holmgren because
of his reputation. And while I still believe that Holmgren could
have done great things here, what I didn’t anticipate was that
Holmgren wouldn’t go “all in” on his new role, deliberately
undermining the very goals he set for himself and the franchise.

I assumed Holmgren would embrace the
role just as he said he would, made excuses early on when he claimed
to be working behind the scenes from the comfy confines of his home
in Arizona (or Seattle, but certainly not Cleveland), and then
finally had my eyes opened wide when he admitted that he had no idea
that half of this year’s roster was composed of freshmen and
sophomores.

In the pantheon of disasters that have
been owners/front office/coaches/managers in Cleveland sports
history, Holmgren only cracks, maybe, the top 25. But as an
allegedly transformational figure of the moment, his place in our
community’s ever growing Hall of Shame should be preserved forever.

**

The press conference Joe Banner, the
team’s new CEO (new person, new title) was numbing in its sameness.
That’s not criticism of Banner, it’s just that you won’t find
a sentence either Banner or Haslam uttered that fans haven’t heard
before and before and before and before that, too. Every new face
that travels through Berea says pretty much the same thing because,
frankly, there’s nothing much else that can be said.

I’d say that Banner has his work cut
out for himself but no more so than Holmgren had or Phil Savage or
fill in the blank with whatever name you want. The Browns 2.0 was a
hastily assembled franchise thanks to the NFL and its dithering over
choosing the initial owner and it’s never really caught up.

If there was one thing that has even
the slightest whiff of new from Banner it was his acknowledgement
that this franchise doesn’t need another 5-year plan to turn itself
around. I couldn’t agree more. Whatever else you might feel about
the roster at this moment, the paradigm has shifted in the NFL.
Player movement has never been greater. The draft is as important as
ever but clever teams with good general managers can and do build
depth much more quickly when the draft was the only way to fill out a
team. With less rounds and hence more unsigned free agents and the
significant number of mid-level type free agents available every off
season, improving this roster isn’t nearly as hard as the fans have
been told it is.

There’s a reason a team like the New
England Patriots is a perennial contender despite turning over its
roster each off season as much as any other team in the league.
Sure, having Tom Brady, one of the greatest NFL quarterbacks ever, on
your side is a huge draw for potential free agents. But more to the
point is the simple fact that love him or hate him Bill Belichick’s
real talent isn’t necessarily his game day coaching but his
approach to roster building. He consistently finds undervalued
players (from a salary cap perspective) signs them while
simultaneously discarding higher marquee and often overvalued (again,
from a salary cap perspective) players. Belichick’s brought the
concept of WARP, the ultimate geek stat from baseball, to pro
football and it’s worked.

If nothing else that’s where the
Browns’ deep thinkers have consistently failed this franchise.
They make lousy free agent acquisitions and I’m not just or even
talking about brand names. I’m talking about all the integral
pieces and parts that build the depth and make it palatable for a
team to incur injuries to its starters. No team can win when its
backup to a player like Joe Haden, a decent but certainly not elite
defensive back, and plugs in Buster Skrine.

If you want further evidence as to how
the paradigm has changed then look no further than the willingness of
virtually every team to play a rookie quarterback right out of the
gate. It’s an acknowledgement that today’s crop of quarterbacks,
products of the increasing emphasis on skills building from middle
school on up, are just better prepared for the pro game then their
predecessors.

If Heckert and Holmgren can conclude
after just one season that Colt McCoy isn’t going to cut it as a
top tier quarterback, why is it that those kinds of decisions can’t
be made at every spot on the roster? The answer is that of course
they can and they should.

That’s where, I think, Banner’s
assessment of Heckert will matter. I don’t know who ultimately
lost his nerve in trying to pull off the trade for Robert Griffin
III, but it’s that lack of foresight that actually permeates the
thinking in Berea now and for all the previous years of Browns 2.0 as
well. It manifests in the big ways like the failed trade to get the
rights to draft Griffin, and in the small ways like talking
themselves out of signing this free agent or that, you know the kind
that build depth.

**

Is it just me or is Shurmur getting
more and more testy with each passing day? We can only go by what we
see, as an old coach used to tell the fans, and right now Shurmur is
a guy working on the edge and for good reason.

You can dissect Sunday's game against
the Colts in a hundred different ways but you're still left with an
overarching feeling that the team just wasn't quite ready to play.
The mistakes weren't confined to the rookies. Veterans like Ray
Ventrone and Reggie Hodges were doing some pretty boneheaded things
as well. One the mistakes multiply like they did on Sunday it tends
to be evidence of a team that lack sufficient preparation.

Shurmur is under fire because he's a
lousy game day coach. He's also going to find himself feeling even
tighter in the shorts if his team keeps playing like a mistake-ridden
mess. And if Shurmur is going to get prickly with the media types
asking questions about what everyone can readily see, then Shurmur
isn't long for this job. He'll need to fall back under the radar
accorded a coordinator.

It was amusing to hear Shurmur say in
his press conference Monday, in response to a question about the
rather physical reaction Haslam had to the pass that Josh Gordon
dropped, that Shurmur likes to keep his emotions in check. Yea, we
noticed. It barely looks like he's breathing, as if he's using the
tension and tug of game day to work on some far flung yoga breathing
technique.

It also was amusing because it seemed
to be a little backhanded at Haslam, a way of saying that Haslam too
should keep his emotions in check. One of the abiding problems with
this franchise is that it's been permeated by Type C personalities.
It's kind of nice to see a Type A holding the keys to the castle at
the moment.

**

Considering how tense Shurmur's been
lately, this week's question to ponder: How long will it be before
Shurmur has his Jim Mora moment?